The only daughter of Soviet tyrant Josef Stalin dies at 85
The only daughter of Soviet dictator Josef Stalin has died of colon cancer in a US care home, aged 85.
The only daughter and last surviving child of the brutal Soviet tyrant Josef Stalin finds rest after a troubled and relatively long life.
She carried three names through this long life. At her birth, on Feb. 28, 1926, she was named Svetlana Stalina, Later she changed her name to her mothers name. Then she got the name Lana Peters after her husband.
The darkest moment of her childhood came when her mother, Nadezhda Alliluyeva, Stalin’s second wife, committed suicide in 1932. Svetlana, who was 6, was told that her mother had died of appendicitis. She did not learn the truth for a decade.
She was raised by a nanny with whom she grew close after her mother's death in 1932. Peters was Stalin's only daughter. She had two brothers, Vasili and Jacob. Jacob was captured by the Nazis in 1941 and died in a concentration camp. Vasili died an alcoholic at age 40.
She wanted to study literature at Moscow University, but Stalin demanded that she study history. She graduated from Moscow University in 1949, initially she was teaching Soviet literature and the English language. Then She worked as a literary translator.
In her teenage years, her father was consumed by the war with Germany and grew distant and sometimes abusive. One of her brothers, Yakov, was captured by the Nazis, who offered to exchange him for a German general. Stalin refused, and Yakov was killed.
He was born Ioseb Besarionis dze Jughashvili. After he died in 1953, she took her mother’s last name, Alliluyeva. In 1970, after her defection and an American marriage, she became and remained Lana Peters. In her memoirs she told of how Stalin had sent her first love, a Jewish filmmaker, to Siberia for 10 years.
Her defection from the Soviet Union in 1967 was a propaganda coup for the US. She wrote four books, including two best-selling memoirs. She said her defection was partly motivated by the Soviet authorities' poor treatment of Brijesh Singh, an Indian communist whom she had a relationship with.
Peters went to India in 1966 to spread Singh's ashes, but instead of returning to the Soviet Union she walked into a US embassy to seek political asylum. Instead, she walked unannounced into the U.S. embassy in New Delhi and asked for political asylum. After a brief stay in Switzerland, she flew to the U.S. Although she later referred to Singh as her husband, the two were never allowed to marry. She burned her passport, denouncing communism and her father, whom she called "a moral and spiritual monster".
Upon her arrival in New York City in 1967, the 41-year-old said: "I have come here to seek the self-expression that has been denied me for so long in Russia." She said she had come to doubt the communism she was taught growing up and believed there weren't capitalists or communists, just good and bad human beings. She had also found religion and believed "it was impossible to exist without God in one's heart."
She wrote three books during her lifetime, including the best-selling memoir,Twenty Letters to a Friend. Her first memoir, Twenty Letters to a Friend, was published in 1967 and made more than $2.5m. In the book, she recalled her father, who died in 1953 after ruling the nation for 29 years, as a distant and paranoid man. "He was a very simple man. Very rude. Very cruel," Peters told the Wisconsin State Journal in a rare interview in 2010. "There was nothing in him that was complicated. He was very simple with us. He loved me and he wanted me to be with him and become an educated Marxist."
While Peters denounced her father's regime, she also blamed other communist party leaders for the Soviet Union's policy of sending millions to labour camps.
Perhaps this is what made Soviet Premier Alexei Kosygin to denounce Peters as a "morally unstable" and "sick person."
On the other hand, Lana Peters bemoaned the constant association with her father Stalin. "People say, 'Stalin's daughter, Stalin's daughter,' meaning I'm supposed to walk around with a rifle and shoot the Americans," she once said. "Or they say, 'No, she came here. She is an American citizen.' That means I'm with a bomb against the others. "No, I'm neither one. I'm somewhere in between. That 'somewhere in between' they can't understand."
Peters had lived on-and-off in the United States since famously defecting from the Soviet Union in 1967. Fourteen years after her father’s death, Peters traveled from the Soviet Union to India, where she unexpectedly arrived at the U.S. embassy and begged for political asylum. She arrived in the United States one month later, settling in Princeton, N.J., and denouncing the Soviet Union.
Married four times, Peters had two children in Russia, Josef and Yekaterina, from her first two marriages, and one child, Olga, from her fourth marriage.
In the United States, she married William Wesley Peters, an architect who studied under Frank Lloyd Wright. They were married from 1970 to 1973 and had one daughter. The two later divorced, and the couple’s daughter, Olga, accompanied her mother back to the Soviet Union in 1984. There, she renounced all of her criticism of the Soviet Union and was granted citizenship once again. But Peters and Olga moved back to the United States two years later.
Her son, Joseph, died in 2008. Her daughter Yekaterina is a scientist who lives in Siberia, while her American daughter, Olga, lives in Portland, Ore., under the name Chrese Evans. In 2010, Peters told the Wisconsin State Journal that she enjoyed living in Wisconsin, and talked to her daughter almost every night on the phone.
Ms. Peters was said to have lived in a cabin with no electricity in northern Wisconsin; another time, in a Roman Catholic convent in Switzerland. In 1992, she was reported to be living in a shabby part of West London in a home for elderly people with emotional problems.
“You can’t regret your fate,” Ms. Peters once said, “although I do regret my mother didn’t marry a carpenter.”
Strangely enough, her death, like the last years of her life, occurred away from public view. There were just hints of it online and in Richland Center, the Wisconsin town in which she lived, though a local funeral home said to be handling the burial would not confirm the death.
Sources:
huffingtonpost
ABC News
BBC News
NYTimes.com
FT.com
rt.com
TODAY'S TMJ4
Stuff.co.nz
ABC News
The only daughter of Soviet dictator Josef Stalin has died of colon cancer in a US care home, aged 85.
The only daughter and last surviving child of the brutal Soviet tyrant Josef Stalin finds rest after a troubled and relatively long life.
She carried three names through this long life. At her birth, on Feb. 28, 1926, she was named Svetlana Stalina, Later she changed her name to her mothers name. Then she got the name Lana Peters after her husband.
The darkest moment of her childhood came when her mother, Nadezhda Alliluyeva, Stalin’s second wife, committed suicide in 1932. Svetlana, who was 6, was told that her mother had died of appendicitis. She did not learn the truth for a decade.
She was raised by a nanny with whom she grew close after her mother's death in 1932. Peters was Stalin's only daughter. She had two brothers, Vasili and Jacob. Jacob was captured by the Nazis in 1941 and died in a concentration camp. Vasili died an alcoholic at age 40.
She wanted to study literature at Moscow University, but Stalin demanded that she study history. She graduated from Moscow University in 1949, initially she was teaching Soviet literature and the English language. Then She worked as a literary translator.
In her teenage years, her father was consumed by the war with Germany and grew distant and sometimes abusive. One of her brothers, Yakov, was captured by the Nazis, who offered to exchange him for a German general. Stalin refused, and Yakov was killed.
He was born Ioseb Besarionis dze Jughashvili. After he died in 1953, she took her mother’s last name, Alliluyeva. In 1970, after her defection and an American marriage, she became and remained Lana Peters. In her memoirs she told of how Stalin had sent her first love, a Jewish filmmaker, to Siberia for 10 years.
Her defection from the Soviet Union in 1967 was a propaganda coup for the US. She wrote four books, including two best-selling memoirs. She said her defection was partly motivated by the Soviet authorities' poor treatment of Brijesh Singh, an Indian communist whom she had a relationship with.
Peters went to India in 1966 to spread Singh's ashes, but instead of returning to the Soviet Union she walked into a US embassy to seek political asylum. Instead, she walked unannounced into the U.S. embassy in New Delhi and asked for political asylum. After a brief stay in Switzerland, she flew to the U.S. Although she later referred to Singh as her husband, the two were never allowed to marry. She burned her passport, denouncing communism and her father, whom she called "a moral and spiritual monster".
Upon her arrival in New York City in 1967, the 41-year-old said: "I have come here to seek the self-expression that has been denied me for so long in Russia." She said she had come to doubt the communism she was taught growing up and believed there weren't capitalists or communists, just good and bad human beings. She had also found religion and believed "it was impossible to exist without God in one's heart."
She wrote three books during her lifetime, including the best-selling memoir,Twenty Letters to a Friend. Her first memoir, Twenty Letters to a Friend, was published in 1967 and made more than $2.5m. In the book, she recalled her father, who died in 1953 after ruling the nation for 29 years, as a distant and paranoid man. "He was a very simple man. Very rude. Very cruel," Peters told the Wisconsin State Journal in a rare interview in 2010. "There was nothing in him that was complicated. He was very simple with us. He loved me and he wanted me to be with him and become an educated Marxist."While Peters denounced her father's regime, she also blamed other communist party leaders for the Soviet Union's policy of sending millions to labour camps.
Perhaps this is what made Soviet Premier Alexei Kosygin to denounce Peters as a "morally unstable" and "sick person."
On the other hand, Lana Peters bemoaned the constant association with her father Stalin. "People say, 'Stalin's daughter, Stalin's daughter,' meaning I'm supposed to walk around with a rifle and shoot the Americans," she once said. "Or they say, 'No, she came here. She is an American citizen.' That means I'm with a bomb against the others. "No, I'm neither one. I'm somewhere in between. That 'somewhere in between' they can't understand."
Peters had lived on-and-off in the United States since famously defecting from the Soviet Union in 1967. Fourteen years after her father’s death, Peters traveled from the Soviet Union to India, where she unexpectedly arrived at the U.S. embassy and begged for political asylum. She arrived in the United States one month later, settling in Princeton, N.J., and denouncing the Soviet Union.
Married four times, Peters had two children in Russia, Josef and Yekaterina, from her first two marriages, and one child, Olga, from her fourth marriage.
In the United States, she married William Wesley Peters, an architect who studied under Frank Lloyd Wright. They were married from 1970 to 1973 and had one daughter. The two later divorced, and the couple’s daughter, Olga, accompanied her mother back to the Soviet Union in 1984. There, she renounced all of her criticism of the Soviet Union and was granted citizenship once again. But Peters and Olga moved back to the United States two years later.
Her son, Joseph, died in 2008. Her daughter Yekaterina is a scientist who lives in Siberia, while her American daughter, Olga, lives in Portland, Ore., under the name Chrese Evans. In 2010, Peters told the Wisconsin State Journal that she enjoyed living in Wisconsin, and talked to her daughter almost every night on the phone.
Ms. Peters was said to have lived in a cabin with no electricity in northern Wisconsin; another time, in a Roman Catholic convent in Switzerland. In 1992, she was reported to be living in a shabby part of West London in a home for elderly people with emotional problems.“You can’t regret your fate,” Ms. Peters once said, “although I do regret my mother didn’t marry a carpenter.”
Strangely enough, her death, like the last years of her life, occurred away from public view. There were just hints of it online and in Richland Center, the Wisconsin town in which she lived, though a local funeral home said to be handling the burial would not confirm the death.
Sources:
huffingtonpost
ABC News
BBC News
NYTimes.com
FT.com
rt.com
TODAY'S TMJ4
Stuff.co.nz
ABC News
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